I’m not one for fancy hats or, even worse, fascinators. Surely the only fascinating thing about a fascinator is why you’d want to stick one on your head at such an awkward angle in the first place? I like a woolly hat in the winter, though: one pulled down over my ears when there’s a pesky little wind blowing in off the North Sea.
But as a carer, I’m getting used to wearing a lot of hats.
It’s amazing how quickly a day can go pear-shaped, as what I’d hope to achieve evaporates in the face of unplanned events. It can happen to anyone, of course. The baby that keeps you up all night teething. The train that gets inexplicably cancelled. The colleague that calls in sick. The coffee cup that spills all over your white shirt just before you go into an important meeting (yes, that was me). We aren’t as in control of life as we’d like to think.
But disrupted plans and frustrated expectations seem to happen to me more as a carer than they ever did before.
